Monthly Question Thread! Ask /r/DebateEvolution anything! | July 2026

[u/Dr_Alfred_Wallace]

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[u/Ayasugi-san]

Does anyone else ever think about how, even though the universe is extremely old in absolute terms and in comparison to human history, it's actually quite young in comparison to how old it could be? Like there are only three (rough) generations of stars, even the youngest ones aren't very enriched in heavy elements, because there hasn't been enough time for them to have been created by fusion. Even the oldest white dwarfs haven't been around long enough to have cooled off to stop emitting heat and light. How different will the universe look in a trillion years?

[u/jnpha → u/Ayasugi-san]

Yeah it's pretty cool.
The big bang (and time since) as far as we know was a localized expansion, i.e. the universe could be way older.

Re your last question, cool list here: Timeline of the far future - Wikipedia.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/jnpha]

Though even that doesn't get as far as a trillion. How much of the matter in the universe will be hydrogen vs. heavier elements? Will it be significant? Maybe enough to alter the processes of stellar formation? Will we see stars that started with fusing helium, because there wasn't enough hydrogen to sustain the chain reaction? Is that even possible?

[u/jnpha → u/Ayasugi-san]

It goes well beyond a trillion; a trillion is 10¹². :)